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Pre heart attack chest pain could be protective

Chest pain is a well known symptom related to heart attacks. But new research has provided fresh evidence that pre-heart attack pain in this area could be linked to less serious heart attacks.

Those heart attack sufferers that had felt pain in their chests during the 24 hour period before they had the attack faced smaller attacks, reports the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

It was discovered that having this pain, known as Preinfarction Angina, was linked to people having a heart attack that was 50 per cent smaller than attacks suffered by people who didn’t have this sort of pain.

"Even before we began treating heart attack patients with angioplasty and stenting, physicians recognized that patients with chest pain prior to their heart attack seem to have better outcomes," commented Jay H Traverse, the research's senior author from Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

As he explained, the research was looking at whether this would still be the case in the context of modern treatment methods.

He added that Preinfarction Angina seemed to make the heart protect itself and said that more research ought to be done into this. It's possible that in future drugs could be used to make the protection happen.

The research came out as part of Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions, a journal.